OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM – A wartime opinion
poll among Palestinians published on Wednesday shows a rise in support for Hamas
group, even in the devastated Gaza Strip, and an overwhelming rejection of
Western-backed
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, with nearly 90
percent saying he must resign.
اضافة اعلان
The Palestinians have not held elections
since 2006, when Hamas won a parliamentary majority.
The poll shows 57 percent of respondents in
Gaza and 82 percent in the West Bank believe
Hamas was correct in launching its
October 7 attack. A large majority believes Hamas’s claims that it acted to
“defend” the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and win the release of Palestinian
security prisoners. Only 10 percent say they believed Hamas has committed war
crimes, with a large majority saying they did not see videos showing the
group's fighters committing atrocities.
According to Times of Israel overall, 88
percent want Abbas to resign, up by 10 percentage points from three months ago.
In the West Bank, 92 percent call for the resignation of the Palestinian leader
who has presided over an administration widely seen as corrupt, autocratic and
ineffective.
At the same time, 44 percent in the
West Bank say they support Hamas, up from just 12 percent in September. In Gaza, the
group enjoys 42 percent support, up from 38 percent three months ago.
Support for the PA has declined further,
with nearly 60 percent now saying it should be dissolved.
With survey results indicating a further
erosion of the PA’s legitimacy, at a time when there’s no apparent path toward
restarting credible negotiations on Palestinian statehood, the default for
postwar Gaza is open-ended Israeli control, says pollster Khalil Shikaki.
“Israel is stuck in Gaza,” Shikaki told The
Associated Press ahead of the publication of the survey’s results by the
Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).
“Maybe the next [Israeli] government will
decide that Netanyahu is not right in putting all these conditions, and they
might decide to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. But the default for the
future, for Israel and Gaza, is that Israel is in full reoccupation of Gaza.”
The survey was conducted among 1231 people
in the West Bank and Gaza from November 22 to December 2, with a margin of
error of 4 percentage points.
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